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Learning Theory

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the field that investigates learning and behavior principles by studying animals learning in the lab

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Rene Descartes

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1596-1650 French philosopher and mathematician who distinguished between mind and body, and also discussed reflex action as a mechanical principle that controls the activity of the body.

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reflex action

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A mechanism through which a specific environmental event or stimulus elicits a specific response. -Rene Descartes

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Thomas Hobbes

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(1588-1679) A philosopher who suggested that thoughts and actions follow the principle of Hedonism.

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Hedonism

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The pursuant of pleasure and the avoidance of pain.

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Julan de la Mettrie

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(1709-1751) French writer who believed that the body affects the mind.

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British Empiricist

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British philosophers including (john Locke) and David Hume) who proposed that the mind is but up from a person's experience.

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John Locke

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(1632-1704) British empiricists

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david hume

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(1711-1776) One of the British Empiricists.

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Tabula rasa

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The view, endorsed by the British Empiricist, that the mind is a blank slate. before it is written upon by experience.

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Atomistic

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Consisting or made up of many different elements. The British Empiricist were said to have an atomistic view of the mind because they believed that complex thoughts resulted from the accumulation of many different associations.

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Association

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A connection or a relation between two things, such as sense impressions, ideas, stimuli, or stimuli and response.

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rationalism

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Term used to refer to Kant's school of thought, in which the mind was though to act on experience with a set of inborn predilections and assumptions.

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Immanuel Kant

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(1724-1804) German philosopher who thought that the mind comes into the world with certain inborn assumptions or predilections with which it molds experience.

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Charles Darwin

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(1809-1882) British biologist who proposed the theory of evolution in his 1859 book, On the Origin of Species.

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Early Comparative psychologists

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A group of primarily British Biologists.g. C. Lyod Morgan and George Romanes) Who were active in the late 1800's and who sought to study the evolution of the mind by inferring the mental activities of animals from their behavior

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Morgan's Canon

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A law proposed by C. Loyd Morgan which states that a behavior should always be explained by the simplest mental process possible (also known as the law of Parsimony)

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Edward L. Thorndike

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(1874-1949) American Psychologist whose experiments with cats learning to get out of puzzle boxes profoundly influenced our thinking about the importance of instrumental conditioning and the central place of animal experiments in psychology.

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Law of Effect

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Originally Thorndikes idea that responses that are followed by pleasure will be strengthened and those that are followed by discomfort will be weakened. Nowadays, the term refers to the idea that operant or instrumental behaviors are lawfully controlled by their consequences.

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Ivan Pavlov

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(1849-1936) Russianphysiologist who published the first systematic observations of classical conditioning (pavlovian learning) and introduced many of the terms that still used to describe such conditioning today.

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Conditioned reflex

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Another name for a conditional response i.e., the response that is elicited by a conditional stimulus after classical conditioning has taken place. The term, "reflex" is used here to connect the concept with the tradition of studying reflexes in physiology.

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Structuralism

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A school of psychology especially active in the late 1800's and early 1900's which relies on introspection as a method for investigating the human mind.

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B.F. Skinner

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(1904-1990) Influential 20th Century American Psychologist who first promoted radical behaviorism and pioneered the operant experiment and the study of operant conditioning.

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Radical Behaviorism

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The type of behaviorism identified with B.F. Skinner which emphasizes the exclusive study of external events, such as observable stimuli and responses and avoids any inferences about processes inside the organism.

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Skinner Box

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An experimental chamber that provides the subject something it can repeatedly manipulate, such as a lever ( for a rat) or a pecking key (bird) The chamber is also equipped with a mechanisms that can deliver a reinforcer (such as food) and other stimuli( light noises, or tones.

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operant experiment

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An experimental arrangement in which a reinforcer (such as a food pellet) is made contingent upon a certain behavior (such as lever pressing.)

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operant

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A behavior that is controlled by its consequences. The cononical example is the rat's lever-pressing, which is controlled by the food-pellet reinforcer.

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reinforcer

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Any consequence of a behavior that strentghens the behavior or increases the probability that the organism will perform it again.

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consequences

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Something that follows from an action. Operant behaviors are actions that are controlled by their consequences (such as reinforcers or punishers the might produce)

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elicited

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Brought on by something that comes before. Respondent behaviors are elicited by an antecedent event.

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antecedent

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An event that precedes another one. Respondent behaviors are responses to antecedent events.

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respondent

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A behavior elicited by an antecedent stimulus.

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operant-respondent distinction

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Skinner's distinction between operant behavior which is said to be emitted and controlled by its consequences and respondent behavior, which is said to be elicited and controlled by its antecedents.

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Edward C Tolman

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(1886-1949) American psychologist whose ideas about the value scientific validity of using intervening variables to explain profound impact on all of scientific psychology. Holman also ran many important experiments that emphasized cognitive and motivational factors in behavior and learning.

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Operational behaviorism

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An approach started by edward Tolman which departs from radical behaviorism by using unobservable intervening variables (theoretical constructs) in the explanation of behavior. The approach is scientific as long as the theoretical constructs are carefully defined and falsifiable. It is the approach generally accepted by most modern scientific psychologists.

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intervening variable

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A theoretical concept that can not be observed directly, but is used in science to understand the relationship between independent and dependent variables. To be scientific intervening variables must be carefully defined in terms of the events that lead to them and the behavioral outputs the lead to. Also known as theoretical constructs.

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theoretical construct

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A theoretical concept that can not be observed directly, but is used in science to understand the relationship between independent and dependent variables. To be scientific intervening variables must be carefully defined in terms of the events that lead to them and the behavioral outputs the lead to. Also known as theoretical constructs.

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Clark L. Hull

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(1884-1952) An influential American learning theorist who presented and ambitious theory of learning and motivation that emphasized Drive and Habit.

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Information processing

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A model of cognition based on a computer metaphor in which the organism receives sensory input from the environment and then proceeds to operate on the information through a sequence of activities in sensory memory, short term (working) memory, and long term (reference) Memory.

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connectionism

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An approach in cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence in which knowledge is represented by a large number of connections between nodes or units in a network that bears a metaphorical resemblance to connections in the brain. Also called parallel distribution processing or neural networks.

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parallel distributed processing

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An approach in cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence in which knowledge is represented by a large number of connections between nodes or units in a network that bears a metaphorical resemblance to connections in the brain. Also called parallel distribution processing or neural networks.

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neural networks

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An approach in cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence in which knowledge is represented by a large number of connections between nodes or units in a network that bears a metaphorical resemblance to connections in the brain. Also called parallel distribution processing or neural networks.

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classical conditioning

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The Procedure in which an initially neutral stimulus (the conditional stimulus or CS) is repeatedly paired with an unconditional stimulus (or US). The result is that the conditional stimulus begins to elect a conditional response (CR). Nowadays classical conditioning is important as both a behavioral phenomenon and as a method used to study simple associative learning.

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stimulus learning

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Another term to describe classical or pavlovian conditioning that emphasizes the theoretical content of that learning (an association between a stimulus, S, and a biologically significant event, S*).

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instrumental conditioning

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or Instrumental learning ::Any situation used on Thorndyke's method in which animals can learn about the relationship between their actions and consequences. Essentially the same as operant conditioning, except that in instrumental learning experiments the experimenter must set up each and eery opportunity the organism has to respond.

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operant conditioning

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Any situation based on skinner's setup in eh an organism can learn about its actions consequences. the same as instrumental conditioning except that in an operant conditioning experiment the organism is "free" to make the operant response (e.g. Lever Pressing) as often as it "wants" to.

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response learning

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Another term used to describe instrument mental and operant conditioning that emphasizes the theoretical content of that learning (an association between a behavior, R, and a biologically significant event, S*.)

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S-S* Learning

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Another term to describe classical or pavlovian conditioning that emphasizes the theoretical content of that learning (an association between a stimulus, S, and a biologically significant event, S*).

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R-S* Learning

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Another term used to describe instrument mental and operant conditioning that emphasizes the theoretical content of that learning (an association between a behavior, R, and a biologically significant event, S*.)

Mark E. Bouton (Learning & Behavior) Ch1 Terms – Flashcards

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